Last Chapter of Posthumous Memoirs - Caipirinhas and Salmon with Caipirinha Risotto, and Illegitimate Children Really Have It Rough in This Book

"She liked him, they grew close, made love. From that conjunction of empty sensuality Dona Plácida came into bloom. It must be believed that Dona Plácida still couldn’t talk when she was born, but if she could have, she might have said to the authors of her days, ‘Here I am. Why did you call me?’ And the sacristan and the sacristaness would naturally have answered her, ‘We called you to burn your fingers on pots, your eyes in sewing, to eat poorly or not at all, to go from one place to another in drudgery, getting ill and recovering only to get ill and recover once again, sad now, then desperate, resigned tomorrow, but always with your hands on the pot and your eyes on the sewing until one day you end up in the mire or in the hospital. That’s why we called you in a moment of sympathy.’”

Book:  The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Recipes:  The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz

Caipirinhas

Limes

Sugar

Cachaça
Seltzer 
Ice


I would include the recipe in here, but it was more frustrating than not and may have resulted in sugar and lime juice splashing all over the kitchen table.  This is a great summer drink.  Once you've worked out the proportions of lime and sugar to your own taste, you'll want it all the time.  Here are my suggestions for making it up:  Slice a bunch of limes into sixths.  Dump them in a plastic bag with some sugar.  Let the sugar and fruit marinate until you are ready to use it.  This will allow you to make single drinks but not suffer any lag time between them.  Then, take a few limes out, squeeze them into your glass, add a shot of cachaça, some ice, and seltzer and enjoy.  Repeat as necessary.  

After checking out about 4 different liquor stores I finally found cachaça at Fresh Direct, of all places, and had 2 bottles delivered yesterday.  Now, all I need to find is some dende oil and some manioc starch and I'll be all set with Brazilian ingredients.  


Salmon with Caipirinha Risotto

For the Risotto

2 cups arborio rice

1/2 medium onion, finely diced

2 tbsp olive oil

3/4 cup cachaça

6 cups vegetable or fish stock

2 tablespoons butter

Zest of 1 lime 

Juice of 2 limes

1 generous tablespoon creme fraiche

For the Salmon

4 boneless, skinless salmon fillets

Salt and Pepper to taste

Olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a wide, shallow saute pan over medium heat and saute the onions until they are transparent.  Add the rice to the pan and heat it until it only turns translucent with just a dot in the center.  Add 1/2 cup of cachaça, stirring constantly until all the liquid is absorbed.  Slowly begin adding a ladlefull of the stock at a time until the liquid is mostly absorbed each time.  Reserve at least 1/4 cup of the stock.  The rice is done when it is al dente.  Add the butter, lime zest and juice, creme fraiche, and remaining cachaça.  Hold the remaining stock in reserve until just before you are ready to serve the rice.  

For the salmon:

Salt and pepper the fillets on each side.  Heat the oil in a pan and cook the salmon about 2 minutes of each side, or until it has the desired doneness  (well cooked salmon will tend toward dryness).  

Add the last 1/4 cup of stock to the rice and serve as a bed for the salmon.  

The recipe in the book made it's risotto in a way that was completely unfamiliar to me. I adapted this from the way Williams-Sonoma suggests making risotto, the recipe I always use, with the exception of adding creme fraiche, which tasted fine.  It also said to simultaneously cook the rice and fish, timing it to finish at the same time.  This is pretty difficult considering you have to stir the rice constantly and my kitchen helper was fighting with the end of a wooden spoon attempting to make it serve as a muddler for the caipirinhas.  That's why I suggest adding the last of the stock just before cooking to avoid your rice coming out sticky.  This recipe was received with rave reviews both from kitchen helper Jay, and Ashley, who got a sampling for lunch at work today. 

About the book:  

Boy, do illegitimate get a bad rap by Joaquim Maria.  We've already heard about poor Eugenia who is rediscovered as a pauper, living alone in a tiny room, supported by charity and with the slight implication of fallenness about her.  Then there is Dona Placida,  "the illegitimate child of a sexton at the cathedral and a woman who sold sweets on the street," whose own, legitimate daughter, ran off with a man, and who's mother questioned why she didn't just sell herself to a "temporary husband."  Virtuous in herself, she suffers eternally for the sins of her parents.  And Bras Cubas seems to imply that it should be thus.  He comes to the conclusion, ruminating on her life, that at least she served some purpose, "If it hadn’t been for our love affair, most likely Dona Plácida would have ended up like so many other human creatures, from which it can be deduced that vice many times is manure for virtue. And that doesn’t prevent virtue from being a fragrant and healthy bloom. My conscience agreed and I went to open the door for Virgilia."  And he congratulates himself on saving her.  Of course, she weakens later, marries a scoundrel who steals her 5 contos, and dies a beggar in the indigents' hospital. 

Other than these reflections, there is a whole section on this made up religion, Humanitism, which I'm not too interested in writing about, but which posits that envy is some kind of virtue.  It was invented by a crazy character and doesn't take up too much of the story. 

Having finished the book, I can honestly say that it had it's rare moments, but an overall assessment is that while it's not the worst book I've ever read, it surely was far from the best.  I think I don't like much of the unfairness of it.  The irregularity of wealth, the assumptions about women, fallen or otherwise, the blase disregard for the treatment of slaves and underlings.  It surely reflected it's period well;  one filled with hypocrisy and the glamor of the few. 

Chapter CXVII - Bolinhos de Arroz com Sardinhas and Windows Into Moral Ambiguity

"So I, Brás Cubas, discovered a sublime law, the law of the equivalencies of windows, and I established the fact that the method of compensating for a closed window is to open another, so that morality can continuously aerate one’s conscience."

Book:  The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Recipes: Brazil:  A Culinary Journey by Cherie Hamilton

Bolinhos de Arroz com Sardinhas

(Rice and Sardine Croquettes)

For the croquettes:


4 cups cold cooked rice
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
6 cans boneless and skinless sardines
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste


For the breading:
2 eggs lightly beaten
2 cups dry bread crumbs


In a large pot, mix the croquette ingredients until combined.  Heat over a low flame, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

When the mixture has cooled,  heat 3 inches of oil in a deep pan, then shape into balls the size of a walnut.   Dip each croquette into egg and then roll in bread crumbs.  Fry in batches until golden brown.  Drain on paper towels and serve at room temperature.  

For this recipe, I used flour instead of bread crumbs; I think that was something of a mistake since it didn't have the same flavor.  I was actually thinking a recipe such as this might even benefit from the added crunch of corn flakes.  Just a thought.  Additionally, no matter how tempted you are to try it while it's still warm, it tastes much better at room temperature.  Naturally, I learned this the hard way.  I would also discredit the urge to add less salt if you think that the Parmesan is already salty enough.  Mine tasted just fine, but the whole time I was eating, I was thinking "this could use more salt and pepper."

About the book:

I have always wondered about the morality of adulterers.  How do they justify their actions?  How do they look the spouse in the face, if they are acquainted?  How can they profess love and cope with the jealousy that their loved one is probably still intimate with his or her marriage partner?  Here's how Bras Cubas decides that he will justify his actions.  On the night that he gets his first kiss from a married Virgilia, he finds a golden doubloon in the street.  His conscience pricks at him, "I felt a certain revulsion in my conscience and a voice that asked me why the devil a coin that I hadn’t inherited or earned but only found in the street should be mine. Obviously it wasn’t mine, it belonged to somebody else, the one who’d lost it, rich or poor, and he might have been poor."  

Still ruminating on his find, he decides to send it on to the police, to return it to its rightful owner.  He imagines himself a great humanitarian through this act, "I clearly saw the half doubloon of the night before, round, shiny, multiplying all by itself—becoming ten—then thirty—then five hundred—expressing in that way the benefits I would be given in life and in death by the simple act of restitution."  It is after this that he speaks about windows.  Essentially, to his moral code, by sacrificing the golden doubloon, he has made up for the selfish act of taking Virgilia.  He returned one man's coin; he can take another man's wife. One window closed; another open to air out his conscience.

Incidentally, when he finds five contos (about $5,000 roughly speaking but most likely worth a great deal more in the 1800's) on the beach, he does not report them.  A golden half doubloon can be returned with equanimity, but the 5 contos he decides to keep and use for the dowry of some poor girl, perhaps.  What he actually does is to bribe the woman who presides over his love nest by giving her the gift of 5 contos retirement money.  In this way, I imagine, he is opening yet another window.